SUMMARY OF THE FILM
The Opening Credits of the film show Billy in his room. We see a record player and a close up of hands. The record player, mad wallpaper and song all establish the time period of the film, the 1980s. The song is “I was dancing when I was 12”. We see vivid coloured wallpaper, Billy jumping on the bed, the room becomes enormous and we admire his athleticism.
The music stops and he runs down to make breakfast. He realises his granny has gone. He goes searching for her, she must be suffering from alzheimer’s. As he searches we see in the background the police setting up in riot gear. This glimpse sets up the cultural background. Billy’s brother and father are miners. They are on strike, there is a picket line and strike posters. SCABS is the slang name for workers willing to operate the mine when others are on strike. They are breaking the strike.
Billy’s attempts to play the piano, only annoy his father. Billy says sadly “Mam would have let us”. As the camera moves up the piano, we see on the top of it the photo of a family with a mother. The mother is obviously absent from this family. We realize later she is dead.
On his way to the Working Men’s club to do boxing, Billy meets a dark haired boy called Michael. Even though Billy is no good at boxing, his Dad wants him to box. The gloves he wears are his grandfather’s. Billy’s social background is mining and boxing. His mother could play the piano, so was obviously artistic. Billy gets floored with one punch by a boy much smaller than him.
The ballet classes have to share the boxing hall since their room is being used as a soup kitchen for striking miners. Please remember that if you are on strike you don’t get paid. The union can support you for a while with strike pay. But these miners have been on strike for a long time. Billy ends up doing punishment boxing exercises, he has to give a key to Mrs Wilkinson. But he watches then participates in the ballet classes. The camera moves along the dancers’ feet until it gets to Billy’s boxing shoes. After the lesson Mrs Wilkinson gives Billy a pair of ballet shoes.
Billy has to make a decision. In his world, a mining community, men box and women do ballet. He watches Mrs Wilkinson’s car go against a background of redbricked houses and bobbies (English policemen). Then we see a short black and white film with Fred Astaire, a famous dancer.
The film cuts to a visit to his mother’s grave with his granny. We see a long shot of two figures dwarfed by industrial chimneys. This emphasises the fact that this is a working class area. There are beer cans on the grave and spray paint. The graveyard is beside an electricity station.
Initially Billy Elliot’s reaction to boys who dance is that they are “poofs”, homosexuals. This will be the reaction of most of the men in his community. There is a fantastic scene where Debbie Wilkinson and Billy walk back from school. Debbie drags a stick along strike posters and then along the shields of the riot police. She mentions Wayne Sleep, a famous British dancer. When Billy says he feels “like a right sissy”, he is told not to act like one.
Throughout the movie the soundtrack is great. It is good dancing music and sets the time period of the 1980s.
The van containing the DURHAM COUNTY LIBRARY arrives. Billy is uncomfortable about being seen going into the library. Maybe his community feels that working class people don’t read, they do manual labour. He steals a library book on ballet as the woman is distracted by the man running from the police. Billy practices the positions in the bathroom. In a humorous moment we see him fall in the bath. He shows grit and determination. Billy feels fulfilled by the dancing and there is an extended scene of him running through the streets and playing the piano.
Later scenes of the ballet classes are interspersed with the miners pushing against police. They are throwing eggs against buses carrying ”scabs”, a term for those willing to work in place of the striking coal miners. There is a small scene where Billy’s father and brother meet a man who has broken the strike and gone back to work. There is a lot of anger and aggression. These are the two realities of Billy’s life, the strike and dance.
His father eventually finds out that Billy is not going boxing. When he sees Billy dancing, he is horror struck. He makes him leave the class. He does not believe that ballet is a manly sport. “Lads do football, boxing or wrestling”. He refuses to answer Billy’s question, “What is wrong with ballet?”. I think the Dad already feels vulnerable because he has lost his wife and can’t work or earn money because he is on strike.
We hear the song ”Children of the Revolution”, as Billy walks to Mrs Wilkinson’s house in a middle class estate. The houses are all detached with cars, unlike Billy’s terraced house. Mr Wilkinson is angry and rude about the miners. The mines are uneconomical and should be shut down. We learn though that he has lost his job. Debbie says later that her father is unhappy and drinks. Her parents sleep in separate beds and don’t have sex. Her dad had an affair with someone from work. There is a tender scene between Billy and Debbie where they have a pillow fight and she touches his face. We think they are going to kiss, but they are interrupted by the mother. Perhaps this little scene is establishing that Billy is interested in girls. On the way home Mrs Wilkinson mentions there are auditions in the Royal Ballet School.Billy does not think he knows enough about ballet. But she says “how you move and how you express yourself, that’s important.”
The ballet lessons continue in secret. Billy gets a surprise when he goes to visit his friend and finds him in a dress. Michael is even experimenting with lipstick. According to Michael his own father dresses up when he thinks no one is in the house. Perhaps Michael is also exploring being different. Michael will miss Billy if he leaves.
There is a dramatic scene, when we see a darkened boxing arena. We see the smoking silhouette of Mrs Wilkinson. They are preparing for the audition. Billy is to bring special items. He brings a cassette of music, a striped jumper and his mother’s letter. He should have opened it at eighteen, but he could not wait. He has read it so many times that he knows it off by heart. Mrs Wilkinson begins reading the letter, but then Billy recites it. It is an emotional moment, when his dead mother reaches out to let him know he will always be loved.
“I am proud to have known you,
proud that you were mine’
always be yourself. Love you forever”
The soundtrack then plays “I love to boogie” and we see everyone dancing, the granny doing ballet. Tony, the brother, cleaning and dancing with headphones. A happy and humorous moment.
The next scene is darker. Tony gets up at night and finds a hammer. What is he planning to do? The father tries to stop him, even hits him, to stop Tony committing violence and getting into trouble. But Tony calls his father “a useless twat”. These are ordinary people driven to desperate acts. The aggression between father and brother disturbs Billy and he cannot concentrate. He gets angry towards Mrs Wilkinson. He calls her a failure, she does not even have a proper ballet school. But he is not angry with her, but with life.
There is an extraordinary extended scene, showing an eruption of violence. Tony is chased through several houses. We see the brutality of the police invading streets and homes. The soundtrack plays The Clash song, “London Calling”. Tony gets stuck in a sheet and runs in front of the police. He is truncheoned by them, we see blood on the sheet and he is put in a prison van. Billy observes, horrified. He misses the audition because Tony is in court.
As they return from court Mrs Wilkinson comes looking for him. The dad seems reasonable but Tony reacts aggressively and violently. Why? He is under stress from the strike and the court. He is not interested in Billy’s dreams, when faced with his own reality. Tony shoves Billy on a table and demands that he dance. There is a huge verbal fight between Tony and Mrs Wilkinson. We see the energy bursting from Billy as he attempts to contain the dance. He dances in the yard and in the outside toilet. Eventually he knocks the toilet door down and dances. All his aggression goes into dance. He tapdances furiously. Twirling down the street. The soundtrack to this section is “A Town called Alice”, by The Clash. It seems as if Billy is trying to escape his background. He is finally stopped by the iron shutters closing off the end of the street. Summer turns to winter as we see small flakes of snow on the screen. Billy pulls on his anorak. Summer has turned to winter and Billy has stopped taking ballet lessons.
The piano is destroyed for firewood, to heat the stove. A link with his dead mother is broken. The miners are not working, so there is very little money. Billy’s father feels he has failed, so we see him crying on Christmas Day, as they eat their dinner. Later Billy meets Michael, both of them are learning to accept that Michael is gay. Billy goes into the Working Men’s club and puts Michael into a tutu. Billy’s dad comes in and appears shocked, but Billy refuses to stop and dances his heart out in front of his dad. The father runs off, not because he is ashamed of Billy, but because he goes to find Mrs Wilkinson.
A proud man, the father feels he must make sacrifices. In a scene which really upsets me, he swallows his principles and tries to return to work to get money for Billy’s dream. It will mean him losing all his friends and being ignored in his mining community. As we sit on the bus with the father, we see life from the “scabs” perspective. We see the violence directed at them. Tony spots him. Father and son are divided. Tony races into the mine and holds his father. Grief pours out of the older man, “Let’s give the boy a fucking chance”. Tony persuades the dad not to go back to work. Even now in the old mining communities of Yorkshire, men who broke the strike are not spoken to by the ones who survived a year without work. Later that night Tony in bed tells Billy, “Dad’s right you know, Mum would have let you”.
Suddenly the community starts to support Billy. George, the boxing instructor, organizes raffles. The money for a new punching bag goes to Billy instead. Billy’s father pawns his wife’s jewellery. We see Billy and his father on the bus to London. The father has learnt to deal with his prejudices. Amazingly, the dad had never been to London, as he points out to Billy, “There are no mines in London”.
When we get to the school, there is a dramatic clash of cultures. The school is a huge, luxurious building and we can compare this to Billy’s tiny red bricked house with no garden. People’s accents are different, the other boys sound posher. His dad realises the opportunity that Billy could take advantage of. Billy does a medical and then dances in front of six examiners. They watch fascinated as Billy does his unusual routine. You can sense they are unsure about Billy, one examiner asks Billy a final question as they leave – “How does it feel to dance?”, Billy can’t answer at first, then says it feels like you can disappear in the dance, that you have fire in your body, flying like a bird, electricity.
Billy’s life continues as normal, but everyone is waiting for the news. The postman arrives, the father places the letter on the table. Billy takes the letter into another room. We wait anxiously with the father, brother and granny. The tension increases the longer Billy is in the room by himself. The family is so used to tragedy and failure. They can wait no longer, so they burst into the room. Billy is almost weeping as he tells them he got in. We see the Dad running excitedly to his friends in the club. But they are sad because the union has given up and the strike is over.
Later at the graveyard, we see Billy’s father smile. Ballet transforms them all. The father lives again and experiences happiness through his son’s dreams. Billy must now move on in his life. He says goodbye to Mrs Wilkinson, who tells him, ”go out and find life”. Billy’s journey to a new life will take him away from his origins and birthplace. Goodbye granny, goodbye Michael, goodbye redbricked streets. Billy gives Michael a goodbye kiss, letting him know he is okay with Michael’s sexuality. Goodbye Dad and Tony. The men stand awkwardly in their donkey jackets, their work clothes. Tony shouts to Billy, “I’ll miss you”. The bus takes Billy away, the film then shows us the men defeated going back to work underground and Mrs Wilkinson in an empty hall.
Suddenly the film moves forward several years. The father and Tony are on the Underground in London. The father is older and confused by all the people. They are in a huge theatre with seats beside an adult Michael. He is all made up, with a handsome black companion. We see an adult Billy Elliot, warming up about to go on stage as lead dancer in Swan Lake. There is a close up shot of the father in tears of pride and joy. Billy’s leap onto the stage is dramatic and powerful. The camera freezes it and the film returns to show both the opening section again and the adult performer.